Already Gone

I am staring at this computer screen, stunned by what I can not, will not see. I've dreaded this moment for seven years, from the beginning, I knew I was way out of my league with her, I tried buying her things, a new car, a new home but she just cried and got meaner from unhappiness and loneliness. I heard when she asked for my friendship and attention but, I resented that she had the freedom to know what she needed and then to ask for it; it seemed audacious. That's what I loved about her in the beginning, her fire and passion; she seemed to eat life itself. It was such a thrill just to be in her sphere and feed off of the sparks of that flame and desire she carried with her from room to room.
Her joy was unbridled and pure and her laugh made me buckle with weakness for her, later I came to hate even her laugh. How can she laugh when I am so miserable? Truth is I am always miserable and I contaminate her and us with that misery, I don't know what's wrong with me but, I can't be happy. I tried to hide my cloud of lethargy and fatalism, looking back, I thought her joy and light could save me, so I snatched her from her life and carted her to the suburban cage where she quickly began to languish like a leaf without a breeze. Of course I noticed her wilting immediately because I watched her closely and kept a hyper vigilante eye on her, every breath she took I wanted to make sure was staying and real. I was like her shadow following her from the kitchen to the bathroom, I wanted to crawl inside her and I started begging to let me stay while she peed but, she was adamant it was impossible. I kept begging for years and she kept resisting.
I couldn't keep pretending I was normal for long; there was no where to hide and my ugliness began to peck at her a little every day. She made a salad I didn't like, she didn't do laundry often enough, she was too politically inclined and entirely too passionate about the wrongness of the war. I wanted to starve her because I knew I could never satiate her hunger, her thirst. I began withdrawing small things slowly, like my approval and then maliciously recounted that her smile is like a line of sharks' teeth and then I attacked the most sacred places and from that place in the gutter, there is no getting back up. The most malignant of my attacks was a subversive, underlying, seething, constant and endless stream of malice directed at her character and her being. I loved her and I knew I was not good enough for her and I hated her for that. Ironically, I felt trapped. The depth of my selfishness is I put her in a cage and began to threaten her survival and I felt trapped by the scenario I'd built.
With a malicious pleasure, I set out to destroy her. I began unloading every single chore, responsibility and errand onto her small waif like shoulders and her big, beautiful heart kept taking it on, with just a flicker of confusion in her big dark eyes. She cried and begged me to help her and I either said I'd help and then got 'too busy' or I just told her plainly, no, do it yourself. She had a tough time finding a job and the crying jags and depressive fits became erosive and like tumbling backwards on a hill, the momentum took her down. I used her unemployment as another weapon in my arsenal to kick her some more and knock her further into the ground because all I had to offer her was my pay check and soon she'd become wise and leave and I can not lose her. I love her too much to lose her. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, the closest I've ever come to believing in a God.
She told me once that I turned to her in my sleep on a few occasions and asked if she was an Angel sent by God. She would learn soon enough that I am the devil; I love and hate her in precisely equal measure. This is my inferno that I have caste her full into.
When she stopped fighting with me, I knew I'd already lost her. She no longer cried and she never begged for anything anymore and she looked at me with shocked contempt; she saw what I was. I couldn't hide myself from her gaze anymore and she knew what I was made of and that I was not an innocent merely bumbling around but a serpent looking to feed. Her eyes were no longer filmed over with love or obligation or hope; like being plunged into an icy lake, the truth snapped her back to herself. I saw it happen and it propelled me forward to become bolder in my war against her and I launched a public campaign to belittle and reduce her in her own eyes because she was already gone.
My fury and my fear all combined to hunt her where ever she may go to find refuge from my assaults. She will not leave me; I love her. The meaner I become the less affected she is and soon she's utterly uninterested in my existence and she's making excuses for being out late. At breakfast, I saw the lack of sparkle on her left hand and I felt as though I would vomit, when I asked her when she took her rings off, she said it's been days. I don't believe her, I would've noticed, I think she took the rings off out in public and then put them back on until she decided she didn't want to play that game either anymore. I wanted to weep seeing the absence of our vows had reached her hand; I felt bereft, so I left for work.
And here I am at this moment, staring at my computer screen begging for the words not to be there.
She doesn't say much but, parsimony is always the luxury of the free.
The email subject line reads: I can't do this any more.
The body of her message is only two words: good bye.
I can't do this anymore; good bye.
My angel is gone.